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Willowbrook State School
Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with intellectual disabilities located in the Willowbrook neighborhood of Staten Island in New York City from the 1930s until 1987. The school was designed for 4,000, but by 1965 it had a population of 6,000. At the time it was the biggest state-run institution for the mentally handicapped in the United States. Conditions and questionable medical practices and experiments prompted Sen. Robert Kennedy to call it a snake pit.
